Plonka's Blog

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

I had another one up here for a minute or two, but I've recently read this, at "the Age" again. What is it with all the nutbag stories there at the moment? The other one was about a protest over an islamic school in Sydney. Sheez..

Anyway, to the story at hand. You know how I made the assumption in my last post that Ms Gillian Gibbons was probably a pretty good teacher because she obviously had happy, confident students? Well it seems I was right not just about that, but also the circumstances surrounding it. It seems that Ms Gibbons used the teddy as a teaching aid. She'd devised a writing exercise where the kids took the teddy home and then wrote about what they did with it.But it was young Mohammed that had the idea that they call the teddy bear Mohammed and now the poor kid seems to be a bit bemused and upset by the whole ordeal:

"The teacher asked me what I wanted to call the teddy," the boy said shyly, his voice barely rising above a whisper. "I said Mohammad. I named it after my name," he added.

Just as I thought, kids being kids:

He said he was not thinking of Islam's Prophet when asked to suggest a name, adding most of the class agreed with his choice.

Well it's hardly surprising in an islamic environment that the rest of the kids would agree with his choice, they probably all have family members who are named Mohammed, if they aren't themselves, so where's the problem?

Mohammad said Gibbons was "very nice" and he would be upset if she never came back to teach. He added Gibbons had not discussed religion nor did she mention the Prophet.

"We studied maths and English and spelling," he said, rubbing his mop of short, curly hair.

So there you have it. A perfect lesson in how to remove a good teacher and traumatise the kids she teaches, all in one fell swoop. But kudos to Mohammed's parents for having the guts to come forward and protest.

7 Comments:

If one has the ill fortune to be in one of those unfortunately-not-Godforsaken Islamic countries, it's probably best to avoid mentioning Muhammad in any way whatsoever. There's no telling what will set those people off on a flogging fit.

Gee, why are people protesting an Islamic school in Sydney? Don't the good people of Sydney like the idea of a school teaching a belief system in which floggings and beheadings are the standard response to dissent?